This blog is dedicated to the music and life of Erskine Morris, an old-time fiddler from Douglastown, Quebec. Through this blog myself and Erskine's son hope to document and promote the local fiddle traditions of the Gaspé Coast.

Erskine Morris (1913 – 1997)

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

My friend, Bill Erwin, from the Pontiac recently uploaded two videos of Brian, Brigid, and me playing two tunes on a relaxing Sunday afternoon at the end of the week. We learned both of these tunes from Erskine Morris and they appear as earlier posts on this blog.
As we set into winter here in Eastern Canada, these videos certainly bring back nice memories of the warm days at last summer's end. Here we are playing the "Tune from the North Coast":

Here we are playing "The Little Boy's Reel":

Brian gets in some really tasty lead picking that is right in sync on the last tune.

I wanted to let the readers know that Bill Erwin's YouTube channel is probably the finest and most extensive collection of grass-roots Canadian fiddle culture on the Internet. What's amazing to me is that Bill isn't a musician himself; however, he grew up surrounded by it with an uncle who played with some of the finest fiddlers in the Gatineau Valley. Since the 1980s, has taken video and audio recordings of fiddle culture around the Ottawa and Gatineau Valleys. You can spend many hours checking out the videos on his site. Big thanks to Bill for all his great work.